A journey of the mind afloat in space and time. An emotion capture. Arresting images and some great poems and lyrics.

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Monthly Archives: February 2017

The first thing I taught my kids to cook was pancakes. On this pancake Tuesday it comes to mind, Louise having a Sunday morning lie in. Me with three rugrats at the kitchen counter, getting them to beat eggs and flour. Cooking up the pancakes. Having fun tossing them. Letting them drown them in syrup as a treat.

Years pass and tastes change, but they still love those pancakes.

You seem to spend a lot of your life having mini-battles about food. “Try this, you’ll like it. Go on, just three bites, just one bite, anything”. As parents we worry if they are eating enough. Then we worry if they are eating the right things. Then we worry they are eating too much.

Food is an education. Food is social capital. We learn all the most important things over food, our societal mores, our family values, our means of transacting and interacting with others.

When children go out into the world they carry this social capital with them. A knowledge of food is an entry into society. It demonstrates the type of home you grew up in. The truth is we judge people every day by what we see in their shopping baskets.

Then our children come back from their exposure to the wild world and can surprise us. Esha fell in love with Burritos from Boojum up in Galway on work experience. Our youngest, Gavin, just returned from Kolkata, India and said in the quiet way he has that he has become mostly vegetarian. I came across this poem which sums up how I feel about the way kids express their maturity through food.

For the Love of Avocados ; by Diane Lockward
I sent him from home hardly more than a child.
Years later, he came back loving avocados.
In the distant kitchen where he’d flipped burgers
and tossed salads, he’d mastered how to prepare
the pear-shaped fruit. He took a knife and plied
his way into the thick skin with a bravado
and gentleness I’d never seen in him. He nudged
the halves apart, grabbed a teaspoon and carefully

eased out the heart, holding it as if it were fragile.
He took one half, then the other of the armadillo-
hided fruit and slid his spoon where flesh edged
against skin, working it under and around, sparing

the edible pulp. An artist working at an easel,
he filled the center holes with chopped tomatoes.
The broken pieces, made whole again, merged
into two reconstructed hearts, a delicate and rare

surgery. My boy who’d gone away angry and wild
had somehow learned how to unclose
what had once been shut tight, how to urge
out the stony heart and handle it with care.

Beneath the rind he’d grown as tender and mild
as that avocado, its rubies nestled in peridot,
our forks slipping into the buttery texture
of unfamiliar joy, two halves of what we shared.

Charles VIII of France, who was known by his subjects as Charles the Affable. For me he is the Monarch of the morbus gallicus, the Sovereign of syphilis, the prince of pox.

In 1494 on the death of his relative he exercised his “right” to the throne of Naples. In a swift campaign he swept through Italy and seized Naples (on this day in 1495) without a siege. On the way through Italy his French and Swiss troops deported themselves in the usual manner of invading soldiers and raped their way down the peninsula.

The Italians rapidly formed the League of Venice, or the Holy League in 1495 with support mainly from the Neapolitans, Milan, Venice, the Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdoms of Spain.

There is a “pre-Columbian” theory that syphilis was present in Europe in some form before this point, but it is also known that it was in the New World. The popular theory is that the Spanish contingent contained some soldiers and sailors who had been with Columbus in the new world. Or perhaps they shared the same brothels as the Sailors of Columbus before they departed for Italy.

Whatever the origination there is no doubt that the full blown and virulent explosion of syphilis into Europe can be traced to the war in Naples.

In 1495 the French and Swiss were driven out of Italy by the Holy League, but they brought the disease with them. They raped and pillaged their way back through Italy to France and then brought the disease home. It spread throughout the world and was initially a highly virulent disease that resulted in early death. This supports the theory that it came from the New World for the Europe of the 15th Century had no immunity to the illness.

England had the misfortune to join the League of Venice in 1496. By 1497 the disease had reached England and Scotland.

To this day it remains one of the most horrible and contagious diseases in existence. Modern antibiotics kept it in check for the last 60 years, but now it is having a resurgence in a world of relaxed sexual mores, anti-biotic resistant strains and low immune conditions such as Aids.

The disease recedes in times of peace, but resurges every time there is a major war. War is the friend of the Sexually Transmitted Disease.

The Beechcraft Bonanza, probably the most famous aircraft in the world of Rock and Roll. On this day in 1959 three rock and roll stars boarded one of these planes for their last flight. RIP Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper died in the crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

Imbolc, the festival of Brigit, Goddess of ancient Ireland. She ruled over the Spring, fertility, healing, poetry and smithcraft. As Goddess of Poetry she has pride of place on this site. Officially Imbolc is a cross quarter day, one of the four great festivals of the Celtic calendar. It lies between Winter solstice and Spring equinox.

The title of this post is in Irish Gaelic. It means “Day Feast Brigit” (Brigit’s Feast Day)

Along with Hallowe’en it was found to be a sticky holiday with the Irish. Very tricky for the Christian church to get rid of. So they subsumed it. They changed Brigit, the Goddess, into Saint Bridget. This year the Christian feast is Feb 1st and Imbolc is Feb 3rd. Choose your poison, or celebrate both.

Just to fill up the agenda this year, Groundhog day lies in between! Welcome to Spring if you live in Ireland. If you live in the USA you need to hear from the furry rat.